There will be tears at Tottenham Hotspur today.
Emotions will be stark. There will be anger, despair, confusion, devastation, exhaustion, and perhaps even some relief that it’s over one way or the other — especially after yesterday (Thursday), when waiting for Caesar’s thumb to turn will have felt like purgatory.
It will take days, weeks, months, maybe years for some to truly get over it.
Seeing Harry Kane in the colours of another club will never be normalised.
There will be a palpable sense of shock, even grief, at one of their own choosing to play for someone else, but given the protracted summer of will-he?-won’t-he? negotiations, what there won’t be is surprise.
To many, this day will have felt inevitable — which says more about Tottenham than it does about Kane. He had outgrown them a long time ago and Spurs just never caught up.
He stayed for love, he listened to his heart for years. This summer, he has listened to his head and decided to join Bayern Munich: barring any unexpected late hitches, he will become their player in the coming hours.
The timing of it all, however, leaves a lot to be desired.
It’s August 11, two days before Tottenham kick off their Premier League campaign.
New head coach Ange Postecoglou must be wondering what on earth he’s signed up to.
Ange Postecoglou (Eric Alonso/Getty Images)
That is not particularly Kane’s fault, given the jostling, jousting and posturing of those negotiating the deal, albeit he could have set his personal deadline for a couple of weeks earlier rather than the eve of the season.
No one can blame him for leaving. OK, Bayern are a step below the wholly palatable landing zones of Barcelona or Real Madrid for any player furthering their career ambitions and play at the very, very top level, but they are a gigantic club, six-time European champions, a global footballing institution who will offer a stage fit for Kane’s mastery.
He’ll thrive there, he’ll win the first trophies of his career — who knows he may even win a Champions League. And he can still return to the Premier League down the line and have a crack at scoring the 48 goals he needs to beat Alan Shearer’s record — career completed.
But what about Spurs? How do they move forward from here? How do you replace the irreplaceable?
Well, you don’t.
Not only will there never be another Harry Kane at Spurs, but it’s hard to imagine them finding a player even of similar attributes and capabilities… and then you’ve got to ask him to move to a team who aren’t even playing in Europe this season. It won’t happen.
No player meant more to a team than Kane did last season — he scored 30 of Spurs’ 70 league goals, 43 per cent, the highest ratio of anyone in the Premier League. His winning and equalising goals earned them 24 of their 60 points (40 per cent). It was an extraordinary effort in a listless team. It was also the final straw for Kane.
If, on a personal level, he could enjoy the joint-best league season of his incredible career and the team still finished eighth, nearer relegation than the title in pure points terms, then you cannot blame him for being disillusioned and wanting to try something new.
Postecoglou may be a gregarious and excellent coach who will serve up football that Kane would feast on, but the gap to the trophy winners such as Manchester City is cavernous. Tottenham might win the Carabao Cup this season. But they probably won’t (it would certainly be ironic if they did). Kane enjoyed a fun pre-season, but it was too late. Too many previous dawns have been false.
From Spurs and Daniel Levy’s point of view, removing all emotion from the equation, they took a safe bet on the money. They looked at the possibility of their most valuable asset leaving for nothing next summer when his contract was due to expire and said no. They negotiated a bit, drove the price up to a level that could be stomached, then shook hands.
Your average fan who doesn’t play Football Manager can’t relate to that. Football isn’t about money, it’s about glory, about emotion, about heroes. Some will say Kane was pushed out, his hand forced by the acceptance of a bid.
And so you have further discord between the boardroom and the stands.
They chanted vociferously for Levy to go last season. Then the matchday ticket prices went up (there will be protests about that next weekend at their first home game of 2023-24). Now the player they adore, the player who almost felt more important or more cherished than the club itself in recent years, is being sold.
Daniel Levy (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Lose away to Brentford on Sunday and you can only imagine how that atmosphere could turn for that home opener against Manchester United the following Saturday. Happy new season.
And then from a practical point of view, Spurs have 21 days to spend the Kane money in this window — if they haven’t forked out a chunk of it already by pre-empting his sale and splashing up to £43million on defender Micky van de Ven.
They have Brazil’s No 9 waiting to step up, but the most league goals Richarlison has ever managed in a single campaign is 13. What if Son Heung-min, who turned 31 over the summer, can’t rediscover his goalscoring levels of two years ago? What if goals become a problem for an attack-minded team who will leave yawning gaps at the back?
They may very well beat Brentford, Richarlison may click, they may sign another striker worthy of lacing Kane’s boots, there may be a recruitment masterplan ready to enact and you cannot help but be enthused by Postecoglou’s exuberant approach on and off the field. He’s trying something new and it looks genuinely thrilling — a perfect antidote to last year.
Richarlison (Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images)
Or Tottenham may take years — no exaggeration — to recover. Kane’s goals, his determination, his creativity, his staunch will to win, his leadership from the front; on so many levels, he dug Spurs out of so many holes.
But this is about more than some football results, or some replacements in the transfer market.
Last season, Kane gave everything — and was given nothing.
The fact that Tottenham felt they couldn’t keep him — that they felt there was no realistic possibility of him signing a new contract to stay with the club he loves and adores — feels pretty damning on themselves.
As is needing or desiring to take the offer of more than €100million (£86.5m; $100m) that was accepted on Thursday instead of one more year at least. They paid almost that much for Tanguy Ndombele and Sergio Reguilon. Maybe it’s best not to think about it.
They nurtured Kane, they gave him his chance; he repaid them and gave so, so much, but then they could no longer keep up with the objectives and aspirations of one of their own. Their greatest.
His legacy to them is secured, it may never be surpassed, but theirs to him was never met.
(Top photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
